A Day in the Life of Rampage
by WingedPanther73
Summary: A character study on Rampage. Includes some animal cruelty.


Title: A Day in the Life of Rampage

Author: WingedPanther73

Pairing(s)/Characters: Rampage

Rating: T+

Summary: Just trying to get into Rampage's head.

Warnings: Violence and animal cruelty.

Disclaimer: Beast Wars Transformers, its names and characters belong to Hasbro.

Beta Reader: Sybil Rowan

Rampage awoke to the sounds of silence. The last of the three deer had finally stopped bleating in pain and agony, causing Rampage to awaken after a measly four hours of sleep. He surveyed the carnage he had left the night before: three deer, each with its legs broken so many times that they resembled tubes of meat.

He ate in crab form as the pain that twisted through his severed spark slowly writhed and grew. Feeling replenished, and knowing that Megatron would not discover his secret lullaby, Rampage clambered into the ocean. He absently squashed crustaceans and shivered with the release of pain each death represented. Today's experiment was going to be an interesting one: could a shark feel terror, or would it simply die in confusion?

A school of fish swam by, triggering the day's experiment with a concussion blast that stunned them all. Rampage collected them and ran their bodies through his gears, spewing blood through the cold waters. The siren song took so little time to work, drawing numerous sharks. It was a simple matter to grab one of the brutes by the tail. Now came the delicate part. Shivering with anticipation, Rampage began to slowly slice it's tail, adding a fresh source of blood to the cold waters swarming with hunters.

The shock of pain the shark experienced was exquisite, siphoning away the pain he felt in his own mutilated spark. "More! I need you to suffer more for me!" With that, he tore away the the fins on the shark's tail, leaving it to bleed as the bits of tail were gobbled by its cannibalistic brethren. He released the crippled shark, which tried to swim, but couldn't get any traction in the water. The shark began to struggle harder as it smelled its own blood, began to suffocate, and felt the agony of salt water in its mutilated tail. There was not true satisfaction until the first bite at its stump.

Rampage laughed in delight as the spark of self-preservation switched to flight, even as its awareness started to become sluggish. Oxygen deprivation was fighting pain and adrenaline as it was consumed, brothers biting its body in new places, pouring life-blood into the water. "Delightful. You fight to the end as every nerve sears with agony. Struggle for life, I will savor your pain as you die!" Rampage fed on the pain and blood lust, mutilating a new shark as each old victim died.

* * *

He clambered out of the water later, a temporary sense of peace giving him time to log his findings. It was so hard to function as a scientist when your spark was screaming in agony for most of the day. Today he had learned that sharks didn't experience fear, but would fight for life, even when there was no hope. Also, they didn't have the sense to flee a bigger threat that was destroying them all. Stupid creatures, yet effective. Mammals were much more satisfying, as they could actually expire of pure terror.

He was getting quite good at tormenting the herbivores he found. His early attempts at using them to quiet his spark had been abysmal failures. They simply couldn't withstand the kind of damage he was used to inflicting on his victims. Still, the creative possibilities were beginning to grow on him. The art of keeping the creatures in a state of consciousness, excruciating pain, and pure terror, without giving them a heart attack was a delicious balancing act that he doubted he would ever tire of.

As he considered whether he should reinsert the tiger's shoulders in their sockets, he pondered once again how he had arrived in this state. Immortality had sounded so wonderful, when he was brought onto the research team. To recreate the spark of Starscream, and bring true immortality to the Maximals. The flaw, of course, was simple to see in retrospect. Starscream had been one of the most crazed, treacherous Decepticons ever to inhabit a protoform.

Well, now Starscream was the second most crazed. Perhaps a spark needs to achieve consciousness with the wiring. Perhaps Rampage had miscalculated. Regardless, when he modified his own spark, late at night, his calculations had proven both correct and horribly flawed. The alteration to his own spark had also altered everything. The act of rewiring his own spark had spawned feedback loops around his own sensory processors. Only the unexpected empathy had provided a mechanism for release. He bled off the pain into others has he destroyed them.

He tore out the last of the tiger's fangs just before he went to sleep. A predator seems to fear death more than a herbivore. Something about killing to live helps them fear it happening to them more.


End file.
